"I'm fine," Hill snapped, pressing his back against the wall to keep himself steady. He pressed his hand against his forehead and took it away to look at the sheen of sweat covering his palm. "I just ate something that disagreed with me this morning and this damned idiot of a sergeant doesn't know how to fly the damn ship properly!" he shouted down the corridor.
Frank nodded sympathetically and said, "He'll get better at it, I'm sure."
"He'd better, or I'll be finding us a new pilot, that's for certain," Hill muttered. "Anyway, when we get to Iscariot-Four, just follow my lead. It's a hostile planet to humans, and you aren't used to hardcore undercover operations yet. Stay with me, do everything I do, and you'll be fine. Understand?"
"Yes, sir," Frank said.
Hill quickened his pace, trying to get down the corridor as fast as he could. "Show yourself around the rest of the ship. I'm going to lie down for a bit until we get there. But make sure you're ready to go when this ship lands, because I'm not waiting around for any F.N.G.'s, you got that?"
"I got that," Frank said. He watched the lieutenant clutch his stomach and vanish into his bunk and sighed, "Oh, this is going to be just a ton of fun, I can tell."
6. Body Count's in the House
Their ship descended through a layer of smog so intense it covered the ship's windows in yellow, misty grime. Frank leaned forward against the observation port to peer down at the surface, seeing nothing but dimly glowing streetlights. Buehl was bickering with the ship's console, telling it, "I know the altimeter says we're approaching landing distance, but I can't see a damn thing!"
The proximity warning alarm sounded, beeping rapidly as the ship continued dropping. The rapid descent made Frank's ears pop so violently, he had to clench his eyes shut and wait for the pain to pass. He grabbed a dangling storage strap from the wall and held it with both hands, tightening his grip as the warning alert became one long, panicked computer cry. They collided with the ground so hard that every light on the ship flickered as Frank was lifted two feet off the floor and swung sideways into the wall. Once the ship had settled, he was still swinging from the security strap, too terrified to move.
"Sorry!" Buehl called out. "Sorry about that. That was my fault. The damn system wouldn't calibrate for all the pollution. Is everybody all right?"
Frank let himself down and stood up shakily. From further down the corridor, he could hear Lieutenant Hill vomiting and had to smile.
I might be an F.N.G. but at least I'm not a puker.
He bent down to look at Iscariot-Four, seeing nothing but a smoky, fog-ridden city block. There were large geysers of steam pouring from the tops of tall smokestacks that ran up from the sidewalk. Steam hissed out of rusted metals grates in the gutters, and high above the wet surface of the street, a four-lane aerial highway with hovercars and bikes and trucks racing past one another at neck-breaking speeds.
In the dense, gray mist, Frank saw that he wasn't the only one watching. There were dozens of glittering eyes staring back at the ship, and at him. The fog shifted and he saw creatures and aliens and oddly-shaped figures of every kind. He looked for any humans, either on the street or in the cars above, but saw none.
Hill came banging down the corridor, wiping his mouth and scowling at Buehl. He was buckling a service pistol around his waist as he said, "Thanks for almost killing us, you imbecile."
"I'm sorry about that, El-tee. I'm still getting used to flying this thing."
"Well you better get used to it, or you'll be reassigned to the service corps," Hill snapped. He nodded his head for Frank to follow and said, "Are you ready? That jackhole Cojo is out there and the sooner we find him boozed up in some bar, the sooner we can get the hell off this dump."
"Wait a second," Buehl said, jumping out of his seat. "We haven't discussed what kind of gear you're taking for this mission."
Hill patted the pistol holstered on his hip and said, "I've got all the gear I need. Frank doesn't need a gun if he has me."
Frank looked sideways at Hill at that remark, then decided he was better off not commenting. He tapped the black medical bag strapped across his chest and said, "I've got my bag. What else did you think we needed?"
Buehl's mouth fell open, "What else did I…you seriously don't want a gun?"
"I said he doesn't need one," Hill said.
Frank shrugged and looked back at Buehl, "This is just a surveillance op and we're trying to blend in. It wouldn't exactly make sense for me to go around wearing one."
"That's why neither of you should go around wearing one," Buehl said, looking directly at the gun on Hill's hip. "I've got guns you can conceal in your armpit. Guns you can hide in your hat. Guns you can hide inside other guns that are hidden inside other, bigger, scarier guns. Listen, I have got a lot of guns, okay?"
"I honestly don't think I'll need one," Frank said.
"And even if he did think so, I already said he won't be taking one," Hill said.
"Fine. Whatever," Buehl said, looking like Frank had just rejected him from playing on his schoolyard kickball team. "How about comms?"
Hill waved his phone at Buehl and said, "I can track Cojo on this and call you when we're ready to get picked up. Done and done."
"I meant between you two," Buehl said. "You're going to need covert communications with each other if you get separated. How am I going to reach Frank if you go down, Lieutenant?"
Hill chuckled and said, "If I go down? You've been spending too much time with the jackhole, sergeant. Come on, Frank."
Frank watched the lieutenant exit through the side hatch into the murky mist of Iscariot-Four, and he looked back at Buehl and said, "Two clueless human Unification officers on a planet filled with hostile aliens. What could possibly go wrong, Bob?"
Buehl grimaced as he looked out at the city. Lieutenant Hill was already busily holding his phone up in the air, trying to get a bead on Cojo's signal. He glanced down and smiled at Frank's hand, held out toward him with the palm upturned.
"Give me something small that I can conceal," Frank said. "And make it quick before Lieutenant Lostlunch sees."
"Yes, sir," Buehl said, before taking off running for the equipment locker.
Hill looked back at Frank as he came hobbling up behind him. He frowned at the way Frank was walking, favoring his left side and wincing with every step, and he smirked. "I thought they trained you trainees for physical maneuvers. What's the matter? Can't keep up with a real field agent, academy boy?"
They were a block and a half from the ship and Frank had found the lieutenant pressed to the corner of a building, trying to stay out of sight. "I'm fine, sir," Frank said. "I just have a cramp from all that traveling. Buehl said it might be space bends."
"Not you too," Hill moaned. "Shake it off and let's go. I've got Cojo's signal and I want to get the hell off this sludgesucking planet."
A tall, cloaked alien being floated past the alleyway, its long, black fingers bent into sharp talons, moving like a wraith between the crowds of different species that covered the sidewalk. Soon, the figure vanished in the mist and Frank tapped Hill and said, "Let's go."
The street was a long stretch of bars and shops and bussing terminals, with a hundred different ships filling the skies above with thick streams of smoke and landing lights. Frank wondered how Buehl could have forgotten to recommend a breathing apparatus in his equipment prep.
From the corner of his eyes, Frank saw a female alien emerge from one of the doorways and block Hill's passage. She was humanoid, but with glittering pink skin and bright blue lips. She wore nothing but a thin strip of fabric across her generous bosom and a thin, see-through skirt around her hips. She pressed her hand against Hill's chest and said, "What were you two doing in that alley, honey? Why don't you take me back there and I'll show you some real fun?"
Hill angrily slapped her hand away and said, "Keep your filthy hands off me, sludgesucker."
The word echoed like a gunshot against the storefronts, and every head on the
street turned to look at them. Hill ignored it and pushed his way past to keep walking, looking at nothing but the beeping tracker on his phone.
"Sorry," Frank said softly. "He's got kind of an embarrassing medical condition." He held up his thumb and index finger in the universal signal for "Tiny."
The alien snarled viciously at Frank, baring her blue teeth and soulless black eyes, and then she turned away and raced off into the smog. He stood there for a moment, wondering what exactly would have happened in that alleyway if they'd gone with her. There were plenty of predatory animals in the universe that used an attractive display to lure their victims in, and then shredded them to pieces with their claws and fangs.
Or was she just a desperate soul willing to sell herself to survive? Does she just look different than me, and that's what scares me? he thought.
They're aliens, Frank, he could hear his father telling him. They're not like us. You're living in a fantasy world if you think they'll do anything but tear you open, eat you like meat, and slurp the marrow out of your bones. That's why we have to control them, before they overrun us.
Sludge.
Suckers.
Hill was nearly at the end of the block already, and Frank was glad to have to hurry to catch up to him and vacate the area as quickly as possible. For all of humanity's unquestionable universal dominance, as individuals they were still vulnerable to all kinds of feral alien species. Frank felt like a shipwrecked sailor on ancient Earth, wandering into the dense jungle, surrounded by a thousand feral animals. Humans might have all the advanced technology back home, but this was their territory and that made all the difference.
He passed a dozen different kind of aliens, and all of them seemed to be eyeing him hungrily. Frank knew of at least a dozen planets in the surrounding solar systems where humans were considered good eating, and Frank was willing to bet more than a few of the aliens walking past him on the street had heard the same thing and were interested in him like some kind of strange, new delicacy.
If Lieutenant Hill really thinks that Unification insignia on his shirt is going to stop a hungry Vallvitka from yanking off his head and slurping his sludge, he's stupider than he looks, Frank thought.
Frank was limping again as he tried to hurry along, but he didn't mind. The extra security of what was stuffed down the front of his shorts was worth it, even if it made it hard to crouch and walk.
He caught a glimpse of Hill from across the street, just before the lieutenant disappeared behind the closed door of one of the storefronts. Several street-level transports flew past Frank so fast that his shirt rippled, but there were no signals to stop traffic and let him cross. He waited for a break in traffic before he jumped down off the curb and ran for it.
The street was filled with an inch of muck, a poisonous mixture of synthoil sputtering out of the engine blocks of the older transports to the hydrosene fuel splattered in bursts of speed from the souped-up turbines of modified racers. Frank splashed through it until he was safely on the opposite side and looked down in disgust at his soaked boots and pants. The storefront's door opened again as two aliens staggered out, obviously intoxicated, and teeth-rattling bass drums spilled out onto the street through the open door. Frank grabbed it before it could close and went in, stopping at the doorway to give his eyes time to adjust to the darkness.
A dozen alien bodies slithered against one another on the dance floor, the green and blue hues of their skin lit by the swirling, colored smoke curling up and around their legs and arms and tails and tentacles. Frank excused himself as he made his way past a group of large, ominous looking creatures, and headed around the dance floor, trying to find his lieutenant. The air was thick with colored effects smoke and smoke from all manner of pipes and hookahs and tiny rolled up cigarettes that everyone inside the bar was smoking. Frank blinked rapidly and wiped his eyes to try and see as he made his way toward the bar.
Amidst the winged insectoids and cybernetics, he saw Hill, sitting at the bar, scowling at the writhing figures on the dance floor. Frank worked his way through the crowd until he was close enough to Hill to call out, "Thanks for waiting for me."
"It was a test," Hill muttered. "I wanted to see how long it would take you to catch up. Consider me not impressed."
Frank ignored the comment as he looked around the club, seeing nothing but aliens. "Did you find him yet?"
"No," Hill said. "My tracker went on the blink when I came in here, though. This place probably scrambles our signals. Typical."
Frank looked at the bartender, a short, squat alien called a Buddha. They called themselves something else, obviously, but their resemblance to the ancient holy figure was remarkable, except that they were little more than five feet tall and had no discernable ears. If anything, they looked like regular humans who'd been compressed into smaller, fatter, figures. The Buddha caught Frank's glance and came around to them, saying, "Are you two drinking or just taking up space?"
Hill spun around in his seat, one eyebrow raised. "Excuse me?" He leaned forward to press his chest against the bar where the Buddha could see it what was on his shirt.
The bartender looked down at the Unification insignia and his expression changed to happy recognition. "First rounds on the house for our distinguished guests," he said, giving them a fast smile.
Hill grunted as he looked back at Frank, but Frank was too busy looking past him at the bartender as he poured two beers from the tap. "That's exactly why Unification will ultimately win, Frank. Civilization is an inevitable outcome," Hill said, looking out at the dance floor behind them. "Even in places as filthy as this, every single living thing in the universe craves order." He tapped the insignia on his chest and said, "That's what this stands for. That's why I wear it. I represent that order. That's why I wear it, to show these cretins that no matter what they do, we're never far away."
Frank watched the Buddha finish filling up their mugs, then lean forward and spit something yellow and thick from the bottom of his throat straight into the white foam of Hill's beer. The Buddha plunked the beers down in front of them and said, "You boys need anything else, just let me know."
Hill picked up his mug of beer and took a long, deep drink. He lifted his face from the glass and said, "You know what this tastes like, Frank?"
Frank shook his head silently.
"It tastes like the victory of civilization."
Frank watched the lieutenant lift the mug and drain it down to the suds, then slam it back down on the bar and say, "That was good." Hill eyed Frank's drink, still sitting on the bar, untouched. "What's the matter, Frank? Scared of sludgesucker beer?"
A few heads turned at the word, and Frank immediately looked away, trying to pretend that he wasn't with Hill. "Let's just find your friend and get the hell out of here," he whispered.
Hill's response was louder than he realized. His voice rose above the clustered conversations of the others at the bar and drew even more attention to them as he said, "Are you afraid of these people? Or, whatever the hell they are?" He picked up Frank's beer and gulped half of it down, then smiled stupidly at the dancers cavorting on the stage beneath them. He waved his arms in the air in vulgar, grunting imitation, and laughed at his own wit. "These are the noble savages of our time, Frank, and it's our duty to bring the glories of civilization to them, whether they know they want it not."
At least twenty aliens were staring directly at Hill now with open animosity, but he didn't seem to notice. "Are you really as God damned insane as you sound?" Frank hissed.
"Excuse me?" Hill sputtered.
Frank opened his mouth to speak, but his voice pinched in his throat like the words had turned sideways and become lodged there at the sight of three menacing figures coming up behind Hill. They looked human, except for their piercing red eyes and sharp-pointed ears. The female standing on the far left was busily picking her long, spiked metal fangs with long, spiked metal fingernails. Her shockingly orange hair was pulled into wicked spikes that stuck out a foot
from her head and looked sharp enough to impale someone on.
There were two males next to the woman. The first was a large, muscular behemoth with a metal jaw that looked like it had been built out of antique transport scraps. Standing at the front of the trio was the horned one.
The horned one was tall and thin and sickly pale, with two sharp metal horns bolted into his forehead like an ancient devil. He sneered at Hill and said, "You in the wrong place, fleshbag."
Modders, Frank thought.
Former Homo sapiens that had modified their bodies with so many illegal implants and cybernetics that they were no longer able to be registered as human in the Unification census books. Modders were almost always mercenaries, or smugglers, and if they were on a planet like Iscariot-Four, they were probably both.
Hill was still looking at Frank when the horned one spoke from behind him and he smirked with drunken indulgence as he turned around. He put his hands on his hips, making sure the modders saw he was carrying a pistol, and puffed out his chest, putting his shirt's Unification insignia on full display. "Take it somewhere else, buddy," Hill said. "Just be glad we're not here for you."
"No?" the horned one said. "What you here for, then?"
"We're on official business, so just move along," Hill said, doing his best to maintain his air of authority. He was like a lion tamer holding nothing but a chair and a whip in a circus ring, and the lions had suddenly stopped backing up and were now starting to circle dangerously close. Hill raised his voice and said, "Move along, because you don't want me in your life, I guarantee it."
The female snorted with laughter and said, "I'm bored already. Let's take him."
"Take him here?" the horned one said, his glowing red eyes widening with delight.
Frank slid his hand down to his waistband, fingers crawling inside of his pants to touch the hard plastic grip of the gun stuffed in his shorts. As long as Hill stood still, nobody would see him pull it out. I'm not going to start a firefight in here, he told himself. I'm just going to get us the hell out of here and back on the ship.
Grendel Unit 2: Ignition Sequence Page 6